Infinite Roses

So I’ve fallen into this thing. The thing in question, is that I look at this space and I panic, because so much has happened that I can’t figure out where to possibly begin, to contain and summarize and explain what the last three months of my life have looked like. Every time I try I freeze, or fail, or flail around for a while and delete the draft.

Really, I know better than this. I should just start in the middle of things. It’ll work it’s way out eventually.

Two days ago, the weather in Montreal changed from a deep, lazy fall into a sudden and unforgiving winter. Huge, cottony snowflakes have been falling, and this morning the temperature went down to -9 with a wind warning. Everything is diamond bright and I’m finally, finally not overwarm all of the time. I love the change in seasons, but the suddenness of it, the drama, means that my sleep is wrecked and my extremely weird, active dream life has gone bonkers. Everything feels thin and raw and close to the surface.

While walking to get a coffee this morning, a man threw a rose at me from a moving car.

This might sound like a romantic gesture, something vaguely out of a fairytale. Except, I have no idea who the fellow was, and the car was moving quite fast, and he winged it at my head as hard as he could. One of the thorns left a little, ragged scratch on my chin.

So things are weird, is what I am trying to say. Trying to explain exactly how weird, and why, and in what combination, is something I’m not even going to attempt in one go. The solution, of course, is to just capture what I can, strange little slices, and hope over time it accumulates into something again. Going back and trying to sum it all up isn’t going to work. So, forward.

Winter is here, and I am in love. I’m dreaming of cathedrals made of volcanic glass and cold cities again. My exterior life is pretty much as weird as my interior one, which is actually very comforting.

Stay Connected

Natalie Zed’s Latest News

Current Projects

I am working on a collection of Polyamorous fairytales. Because "happily ever after" can mean a lot of different things, and not all of them are represented right now. We have a Polytales etsy store with some amazing poly valentines/ love cards, and are working towards a Kickstarter launch.

I'm also nearing the end of a draft my first novel, a piece of speculative fiction about a henchwoman. It also involves office politics, infrared photography and a profound misunderstanding of quantum mechanics.

I recently wrote a series of poems using the notes engine in the video game Bloodborne. You can find them on the Tumblr I have dedicated to the project, Fine or Foul. You might also stumble across them while you're wandering through Yharnam, good hunter. I wrote about my process and the experience (and about bow Bloodborne is very very hard) for First Person Scholar.

I also write video games. Most recently, I built a terrible little piece of body horror called A Gift For Mother, using Jim Munroe's engine Texture (still in beta). I also did writing and research for The Oldest Game (a newsgame about sex work),collaborated with Izzie Colpitts-Campbell and Kat Verhoeven on So You've Been Fridged(about women in refrigerators and the narrative vortex), and began a game called Restless about a ghost becoming ever more adept at haunting during the Dames Making Games long-form game program Junicorn.

I am also constantly poking at a series of poems that explore the metallurgical and alchemical properties of aggressive music.